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CVE-2026-92591 – Sensitive Environment Variable Disclosure via Installer – Craft CMS 5.0.0 through 5

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Summary

CVE-2026-92591 is a "not failing securely" flaw (CWE-636) in Craft CMS that allows an unauthenticated attacker to disclose environment secrets — including the Craft security key, database credentials, and API keys — through the application’s installer functionality. The bug affects Craft CMS 5.0.0 through 5.10.12 and carries a CVSS v4.0 base score of 8.2 (High). Exploitation requires that the site’s database connection is already down, at which point Craft mistakenly treats the running instance as "not yet installed" and re-exposes installer-only actions.

Technical details

  • Root cause: Craft CMS infers "not installed" state from a failed database connection rather than checking actual installation status directly. When the configured MySQL endpoint is unreachable but PHP/the web server remain up, this incorrect inference re-enables installer actions on an already-installed, production site.
  • Trigger conditions: The site’s database must independently become unavailable (the vulnerability itself does not provide any way to induce this outage). An attacker must also hold a guest session cookie and matching CSRF token obtained before the outage, with that session still valid during it.
  • Attack vector: With the installer reachable, the attacker submits a request to the install/validate-site action, supplying a site name that is passed through Site::getName(). The application expands ${VARIABLE_NAME} style expressions in that value using App::env(), so a predictable variable name (e.g., Craft’s conventional security-key environment variable) causes its value to be returned in the response.
  • Impact: Unauthenticated disclosure of sensitive environment variables and process/PHP constants, including the Craft security key, database credentials, API keys, and other service secrets. There is no reported impact to integrity or availability.

Affected software

  • Craft CMS 5.0.0 up to (but not including) 5.10.13

Severity

  • CVSS v4.0 Base Score: 8.2 (High) — CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
  • CVSS v3.1 Base Score: 5.9 (Medium) — CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Mitigation and recommended actions

  • Immediate: Upgrade to Craft CMS 5.10.13 or later, which determines installation state directly instead of inferring it from database connection failures, and no longer expands environment expressions from untrusted installer input.
  • If immediate patching isn’t possible: Ensure database availability is monitored and restored quickly, since exploitation depends on an active database outage; rotate the Craft security key, database credentials, and any API keys/tokens stored as environment variables if a database outage occurred prior to patching, in case they were exposed; restrict or monitor access to installer-related endpoints at the network or web-server layer.

References

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